The Man in the Closet
by Lizzy Lovegood
Summary: Rose Tyler is on a bad date. John Smith is on a bad date, too. Add one cramped coat room and stir. Inspired by a Tumblr prompt.


**Disclaimer: **I do not own Doctor Who, I just enjoy playing with the characters. The Doctor and Rose Tyler in particular.

**A/N: **This was inspired by the below prompt which I found on otpdisaster's Tumblr.

**Your OTP aren't together and on a date with different people at the same place. After learning they particularly dislike—or are absolutely repulsed by—their respective dates, the two somehow end up hiding in the same cramped supply closet in hopes of avoiding their current date. **

**Bonus if they start fighting over who got there first. **

Hope you enjoy!

_Allons-y!_

**. . .**

**The Man in the Closet**

This was it, Rose told herself, settling as comfortably as she could on the toilet seat. This was the last time she let Pete set her up with someone. She didn't care how cute he was (this one actually lived up to a quarter of the hype) or how many flowers he showed up with (it was always roses, _why _was it always roses?) or how fancy a restaurant he took her to (she'd been to Gallifrey dozens of times with her parents growing up and had stopped being _wowed _by the twenty-foot ceilings and obsequious waitstaff by the time she was six); in the end, he was just another of her father's stooges who thought shagging the CEO's daughter was the best way to make a name for himself.

"Help," she said into the phone the second Mickey picked up.

"It's that bad?"

"Worse," she said and, from the silence on the other end, knew he was going to let her whine about just how much worse. "He _ordered for me_. _Salad_."

"Ooh." Mickey whistled.

"And there were fish-and-chips on the menu, Mickey." Pete didn't let her order off the kids' menu anymore (it wasn't dignified even if she was Rose Tyler, heir to the Vitex fortune and, if she asked the waiter to serve his head on the plate, he would simply nod and murmur _excellent choice, madam _while reaching for the cleaver). At least with Kinda-Cute Guy, she might have been able to get away with it as one of her cute, quirky habits that girls in rom-coms had, but Adam - that was kinda-cute and more-than-kinda-sexist guy's name - seemed to be laboring under the misconception that women subsisted solely off of air and celery sticks. "_God_, I'm starving. Are you at the pub? Could you bring me something?"

"Erm. . . ."

"Never mind. Can you just come and get me out of here? Please?" The pub was twenty minutes from Gallifrey and Mickey's flat was half that; she could hide out in here till then. Adam seemed the type to want nothing to do with nose-powdering and all the other accoutrements that went along with a trip to the ladies'.

". . . thing is, I'm kinda. . . ."

"Oh, come on, the match can't be _that _good."

"I'm on a date, Rose."

"Oh," said Rose, temporarily dumbstruck. Then, as if to familiarize herself with the word, "A date."

"Yeah, surprising, isn't it? And with a real woman and all, too," he added so that Rose knew he was teasing.

"A step up from the blow-up dolls, then," Rose teased back. "Who's the lucky lady?"

"Her name's Martha," said Mickey. "She's interning over at Royal Hope. She's training to be a doctor." He sounded so besotted that Rose wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"Well, just make sure you let her order for herself."

Mickey chuckled. "I think she'd smack me if I didn't."

"Good," said Rose too-emphatically. The sound echoed off the porcelain walls and the silence stretched awkwardly between them until Rose broke it, faking a smile she forgot he couldn't see. "Right. I'll talk to you tomorrow then, yeah?"

She half-expected Mickey to offer to cut his date short, that his childhood friend's dilemma was far more important than some woman he had met a few days ago, and was half-annoyed when he only confirmed that yes, they would talk tomorrow and hung up the phone with a _click_.

It wasn't that she was jealous. Regardless of her mother's myriad recountings of their kiss at the sixth-form social, Mickey wasn't her type in the least. But part of her had always thought he would be there, not in case she changed her mind but in case she needed him for nights like this one: to half-share an extra-large container of chips with and half-watch the match like they always did. For nights when she didn't want a bloke, just a friend.

Some friend.

Now she was stuck in a teeny-tiny toilet stall, feet aching and stomach grumbling, forced to wait the three hours for Shareen's shift to end. She wasn't about to call a cab only to have her face show up on next morning's tabloids, the pages rife with speculation over her destination and just _which_ eligible bachelor the Vitex heiress had been seen out with _this _time. Hopefully Adam would assume she had left and would leave on his own soon enough. She didn't even care if he left her the bill: Pete could take care of it. He was the one who had orchestrated this disastrous night in the first place and Rose had taken great pleasure at his disgruntled expression as she threw her bright blue bomber-jacket - a Union Jack embroidered on the back - on over her evening dress.

The bright blue jacket she had handed over to Shareen - who had snorted as unobtrusively as she could over it - to be hung alongside Adam's slim black peacoat.

The bright blue, extremely conspicuous, jacket that would either tell Adam she had not in fact left and maybe he should send someone to go check for her in the loo or that chivalry would dictate he return to her in person where he could ask her out for coffee or another wilted green salad. Both were equally unwelcome.

The only thing to do was to go and grab it herself, then hide out in the back till Shareen got off work. At the very least, the closet might be more comfortable than the cold toilet seat; her bum was starting to grow numb.

Inching open the bathroom door, Rose slipped back into the restaurant proper and headed, in as casual a semblance as possible, toward the foyer. She sent a silent thanks to any and all deities that might be listening that Adam's back was to her.

Shareen wasn't behind the coat-check desk when she reached it and Rose slipped behind it as inconspicuously as she could. It was a tacit agreement between them that Rose was welcome to hide from just about anyone in the cramped closet-space as long as Shareen could sleep off hangovers in one of the Tylers' gigantic guest rooms. Proportionally, it wasn't exactly tit-for-tat but Rose was willing to take what she could get if it saved her from nights like this one.

At least it had been. When Rose pulled open the wardrobe door, she was surprised to see a man already sitting there. He blinked up at her, bright-blue eyes narrowed against the light streaming in from the main hall, and Rose blinked back at him.

"Can I help you?"

"You're in my spot," said Rose.

The man made a show of looking around, shifting to run his hand along the dark wooden walls of the closet. "I don't see any sign."

"'S still my spot," Rose argued. "I know the coat-check girl and. . . ."

"Who - Shareen?" The man looked pleased as Rose frowned. "She let me in here."

"Oh," said Rose, feeling more than a little betrayed. Mickey was on a date and Shareen had given up her spot for some mysterious man in leather. (She had a thing for bad boys, but this guy looked more like a mildly-annoyed-boy than anything.) "Well, my _father _knows the owner," she retorted.

"And I'm sure your father would defend your right to hide from your date in the coat room to the death," said the man, looking singularly unimpressed. "But I got here first."

"Well . . . 's not like you're not doing the same thing." Rose didn't bother denying her motive but pointed down at him accusatorially instead. "And it won't matter if you got here a week ago if I tell the owner _you're _hiding here, too. So scoot."

He narrowed his eyes at her but did what she asked nevertheless, cramming himself into the corner as Rose, with a furtive glance over her shoulder, ducked down to sit next to him. Her elbow brushed his arm and he pulled it closer to himself.

"Not much room," he grunted.

"Would be if you left."

"Told you, I was here first," he repeated obstinately. "What are you doing?"

"Finding my jacket," said Rose, fishing through the heavy furs.

"Are you cold?" For a second he sounded almost concerned but when Rose looked over he was scowling again.

"No. But I have to take it down or when my date comes to get _his _coat, he'll see it." A knit scarf fell from one of the hangers, draping itself around Rose's shoulders like some long, multicolored snake and she shrugged it off.

"And seeing you hiding in the cupboard definitely won't tip him off."

"I was expecting it to have more room to maneuver," said Rose, eyeing him pointedly. "Anyway, what was your brilliant plan? You'd just disappear when your girl came to pick up her coat?"

The man scoffed. "As long as she gets her money at the end of the night she's happy."

"Wait," Rose clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a high-pitched giggle, "you hired a prostitute and now you're skipping out on her?"

"Call girl," he corrected tersely.

"Semantics."

"And _I _didn't," he added, glaring at her. "It was my cousin. He doesn't think I get out enough. But he told me this was just a blind date, not some," he ran a hand down his forehead, where deep furrows had formed, "some bloody _proposition_."

"She'll tack the bill on to your invoice, you know."

"Jack'll take care of it. Or he'd better. He's already spending a small fortune . . . she's French, for God's sake. World-renowned for giving every grumpy sod their heart's desire. At least according to her website."

He held up the lighted screen of his phone and Rose leaned forward to look, indulging the basic human imperative to share the details of a bad date as soon as possible to anyone who would possibly listen. She stiffened at the sight of the slim, blonde woman on the tiny screen. Draped in diamonds and little else, she looked lasciviously back at Rose from under heavy-lidded eyes. _Jeanne Poisson, _read the curly cursive banner directly above this image.

"Yeah," she said when words were possible again. "She doesn't come cheap."

"Do you know her?"

"My dad does."

"Oh." In the dim light it was hard to see, but she spotted a light-pink tinge to his ears. "Eh . . . sorry?"

Rose shrugged, sifting through the hangers with unnecessary force and leaving a few dangling by one sleeve. "She was just doing her job. Dad's the one who couldn't keep it in his pants." Finally succeeding in locating her jacket, she stood up as well as she could to slide it off the hanger and onto her goosepimpled arms.

Her companion raised his eyebrows, craning his neck to take in the bright embroidery. "_That's _your jacket?"

"Taking it out for a spin is all." Rose crossed her arms defensively over her chest. "'Sides, you're much better. I'm surprised they let you in the door in that." She nodded at his leather jacket and dark trousers, from under which a pair of scuffed black boots peeked.

"Only because I didn't know how posh this place was," he argued, lips twitching as he gestured toward her own outfit. "You, on the other hand, seem well-aware of the stringent dress-code regulations. What's more, you seem to take great pleasure in flouting them."

Rose smirked. "Who's to say that's a bad thing?"

"It's not," he replied. "I'm simply noting what a rarity it is. Your breed are usually inclined to go with the flow."

"My _breed_?"

"Yeah. You know, trust-fund babies and heiresses and celebrity kids. You're already exactly where you need to be, why ruffle any feathers? You just have to smile for the camera and you get to wear the pretty dresses and use Daddy's credit card."

"And how do you know I'm any of those things?" Rose demanded in her most imperious tone, the kind her mother used when she spotted a fingerprint on the Tiffany silverware; the kind of voice Pete used when he talked about keeping up appearances.

"Because you're Rose Tyler."

"And how do you know that?"

"It's on your jacket," he brushed a hand across her sleeve where a white label was stuck, _Rose Tyler _clearly printed on the front. For some reason that must have made sense an hour ago, she'd demanded Shareen log the coats under her name rather than Adam's.

"Oh. . . ." Rose felt her cheeks burning and she fought the urge to flee the semi-sanctuary of the closet.

"I wouldn't have known," he added, sounding apologetic, "but my friend, Donna, she runs this style blog and you're the prime feature. She thinks you're the fashion icon of the twenty-first century."

"So you've known who I was for the past five minutes and didn't say?"

"Most of Britain knows who you are."

"But I'm not stuck in a closet with most of Britain, am I?" said Rose. "And now you can go on home and tell your friend that her _fashion icon _was wearing some horrid Union Jack jacket."

"She'd probably love you in that to be honest," he admitted. "Talk about how you're pairing the traditional with the garish and how radical it was." He smiled a toothy smile which Rose didn't return. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, my name's John Smith."

Rose frowned at him. "Shut up. No, it's not."

"Fine," he said, looking annoyed that his gesture of faux-generosity hadn't been accepted, "it's not."

"Is it?"

"_Yes_." John Smith rolled his eyes skyward.

"Hmm," Rose sniffed.

"What?"

"Nothing." He grunted in disbelief and Rose continued. "Just sounds a bit . . . _ordinary_ for you is all. Thought you'd be called, I dunno, Sydney Carton or David Copperfield or something."

"You fancy me the hero?"

"Or Draco Malfoy." Rose shrugged, tucking a flyaway strand of hair behind one ear and smoothing it down. "Doesn't matter to me, really. But John Smith doesn't suit you."

John made a noncommittal noise that Rose chose to interpret as agreement. "Call me the Doctor if you want," he offered after a few silent moments. "Most everyone does."

"What," asked Rose, "like your friends and stuff?"

"And enemies."

"Which am I?"

"You, Rose Tyler," he said dryly, "are the girl who stole my spot."

"Yes," she countered, "but I'm also the girl who's giving you someone to talk to."

"Who says I need anyone to talk to?"

"Everyone does," said Rose. "Plus, I'm bored."

He rolled his eyes but she saw the flash of his smile in the dim. "You know, you're not nearly as endearing as you think you are."

"Be sure to tell your friend that," said Rose. "I could do with an image change. They could interview you for the story and you could tell them how I tortured you with my scintillating wit."

"Is _that_ what you've been doing?"

Rose narrowed her eyes playfully, skimmed her tongue across her front teeth. "So," she said. "_Doctor_. Are you just a GP or one of those House types? 'Cause you seem like the House type."

"Neither," he said. And, noting her furrowed brow, "I'm going for my doctorate."

"In what?"

"Getting girls in coat-rooms to stop asking stupid questions."

"_Doc_tor." The name slipped so fluidly from her lips that it surprised her for a second. She made up for it by slapping lightly at his arm. "You're not studying like, top-secret military operations, are you?"

"I might be." The Doctor rubbed ostentatiously at his wounded arm. "_Ow_."

"Yeah, alright." Rose crossed _MI6 _off her mental list and awaited his witty rejoinder. When he remained stonily silent, she took it upon herself to fill it. "Tell you what. You tell me what you do and when we get out of here, I'll let you take a picture of this outfit for your friend." It may be a bit humiliating to have her picture pasted online, makeup half-there and hair all staticky, and her beloved jacket torn to libelous shreds, but it would piss Pete off even more and that made anything worth it.

The Doctor sighed. "Astronomy."

"Astronomy," Rose repeated. "So you can tell me if I'll meet a dark, handsome stranger tomorrow?"

The Doctor snorted. "That's astrology. Astronomy is the scientific study of the stars and planets, anything else that might be out there."

"Like aliens?" she asked.

"If you believe in those, sure."

"You don't?"

She expected some biting response, for the Doctor to remind her that there was no proof of any intelligent life beyond planet Earth, to cast aspersions on the mental stability (or lack thereof) of the people who reported crop circles and alien abductions. Instead he just looked lost, as if he had never seriously considered the possibility either way.

"I'm not sure." His face lit with a slightly twisted smile. "Both are a bit scary aren't they: being alone in the great, big universe and not?"

"How is being alone scary?" asked Rose, wondering how she had been drawn into this debate in the first place but perfectly content to remain all the same.

"No one to hear you scream." The smile grew only to disappear an instant later, replaced by a deep frown that was mirrored in the crinkles around his eyes and the furrows on his forehead. It made him look years older than he was: an old man in the body of a young one. It was disconcerting and some deep, buried instinct - speaking in a voice that sounded, even more disconcertingly, like Pete - told Rose she should be scared.

She reached for his hand anyway, so much larger and calloused and colder than hers that it swallowed her up for a second and she had to wiggle her fingers against his palm to ensure that the appendage was still attached to her body.

"Well," she said hesitantly, "there's me."

**. . .**

**A/N: **Love it? Hate it? Let me know what you thought in a review!


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